People-powered governance: Mă Implic’s impact on local governance
The Mă Implic project helps Moldovan communities to improve their public services through engagement and capacity building.
Since having gained independence in 1991, Moldova has seen several attempts of decentralisation reforms. As a result of these, the country has a rather fragmented structure of local government, with approximately 950 municipalities in a country of only 2.5 million inhabitants. While local governments nominally enjoy considerable autonomy, the challenge lies in the lack of local budget revenue to bring this autonomy to life, coupled with the absence of well-established public participation in local government. In this context, our Mă Implic project aims to empower communities where people actively contribute to the improvement of public services. The name of the project expresses this well: ‘Mă Implic’ means ‘I engage’.
Anatol Bucatca, you belong to SKAT’s local team and are the Public Service Manager at Mă Implic, which entered its second phase in 2024. What is your main priority?
Our priority is to build strong foundations with our 56 newly selected partner municipalities. Many are working in politically polarised environments and carry the legacy of decades of centralised planning. But what unites them is a clear desire to improve daily life for their residents through better public services like waste collection, street lighting or water and sanitation.
How are you supporting them?
We’re helping our partner communities to strengthen their capacity to plan, manage, and deliver public services more effectively. Just as important is involving people in these processes. When citizens contribute to shaping solutions, services become more relevant, trusted, and sustainable. Through hands-on support, workshops, and peer learning, we help move communities away from inherited top-down models toward a more participatory and accountable local governance.
What motivates you?
Seeing communities come together around shared goals. Change takes time, but when people feel heard and have the tools to act, progress becomes possible.
Mă Implic is funded by the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development (SDC). The first project phase was from 2019-2023, and included an additional credit for a component on energy efficiency (EnEff), extended to 2024. The second project phase lasts from 2023-2027 and includes a component on water infrastructure (ApaNeff).
